Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

P2P (More) Legal in France

Posted by Hemos on from the not-in-the-free-and-open dept.

A reader writes:"A french appeal court ruled yesterday in favour of somebody who downloaded about 500 movies, on the ground that those were private copies, and that he didn't redistributed them, and that a tax was payed on blank media. This sets the huge precedent that P2P is legal over there. For the details, apparently no distinction was made on the method used to download the movies (upload issues) and the famous EUCD directive was even used by the defending lawyer." You'll want the fish for this one, unless you speak French.

2 of 463 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Blank media tax... by badfish99 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And if the blank media tax compensates the copyright owners for downloading, then it must also be compensating them for uploading, because you can't have one without the other. So if a country has such a tax, it should make uploading legal too.

  2. Finally Some Sanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Private use is Fair Use.
    Copyright has been designed to protect the publishing and distribution rights so to make a copy for private use is "fair dealing"(UK) or "fair use"(US), the court clearly understood that this enhances the cultural richness of France.
    What is illegal is making counterfeit copies for gain or public distribution then you hurt the copyright holder.
    Now people listen to music and everyone listens to more music than they own, this encourages them to make more music and buy more music.
    Copyright was always intended to enhance the cultural richness of the Public Domain by encouraging publication and creation.
    It was never intended to create or support monopolistic cartels Practices.